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Customised Weather Forecast from the Indian Army in the Context of a Strategic Application During the Kargil Conflict with Pakistan in 1999

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Customised Weather Forecast from the Indian Army in the Context of a Strategic Application During the Kargil Conflict with Pakistan in 1999 Customized Weather Forecast For Mountaineering Expeditions In India Earth System Science Organisation National Centre For Medium Range Weather Forecasting Document Control Data Sheet S.No. 1 Name of the Institute National Centre For Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) 2 Document number NMRF / TR / 01 / 01 / 2011 3 Date of publication January 2011 4 Title of the document Customized Weather Forecast For Mountaineering Expeditions In India 5 Type of Document Technical Report (TR) 6 No. of pages & figures Pages 68 and Figures 21 7 Number of References Seven 8 Author (s) Jagvir Singh, Akhilesh Gupta*, G.R. Iyengar, Ashok Kumar, Ranjeet Singh, E.N.Rajagopal, L. Harenduprakash and L.S. Rathore *Now works with Department of Science & Technology 9 Originating Unit National Centre For Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India, A-50, Sector-62, Noida-201309 10 Abstract (100 words) Weather forecast plays a crucial role in the successful and safe completion of Mountaineering expeditions. NCMRWF has been providing numerical weather prediction models based customized weather forecast support interactively (by mobile / email / phone / website) to the Armed forces for their mountaineering expeditions since 2001. A total of thirty eight safe and successful mountaineering expeditions have been supported by NCMRWF during 2001-2009. Method of preparation of customized forecast at NCMRWF, details of mountaineering expeditions and feed back analysis of the products as evaluated by the expeditions teams are documented and presented in this report. 11 Security classification Unrestricted 12 Distribution General Contents 1. Abstract 1 2. Introduction 2 3. Brief Account of Expeditions 3 4. Methodology and Procedure of Preparation of Forecasts 15 5. Weather Forecast Support to Armed Forces for Adventurous Expeditions 16 6. NWP Models, Computer and Network Resources at NCMRWF 32 7. Limitations of Forecasting 34 8. Concluding Remarks 35 9. Acknowledgements 35 10. References 36 11. Annexure-I Figure 6: METEOSAT-7 water vapour channel pictures of 10th April 2007 (T1:00UTC, T2:06, T3:12 & T4:18UTC) 37 Figure 7: Day-4 and Day-5 Forecasts of winds/temperatures at heights of 500hPa, 400hPa, 300hPa and precipitation for 14-15 May 2007 (T80 model) 38 Figure 8: Meteogram for different Camps(camp-III and Camp-IV) of SAGARMATHA expedition for 22nd May 2008 (Morning) 39 Figure 9: Forecast of winds, temperature at 300hPa and precipitation for 22nd May2008. 39 Figure 10: Doppler weather radar(Kolkata) products on 20th May 2009, 11UTC. 40 Figure 11: Cloud Top Temperature (CTT) & imageries from Satellite (Kalpana-1) during 19-21 May 2009 41 Figure 12: Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE in mm) from Satellite (Kalpana-1) during 19-21 May 2009 44 Figure 13: Outgoing Long Wave Radiation (OLR: Watts/Sq.M) from Satellite (Kalpana-1) during 19-21 May 2009 45 Figure 14: (a) Forecasts of winds and temperatures at 500hPa, 400hPa, 300hPa and 200hPa levels; (b) precipitation for 20th May 2009 (T254 model) 46 Figure 15(a): Wind and temperature forecasts at 300hPa, 200hPa levels valid for 21st May 2009 48 Figure 15(b): Precipitation forecasts valid for 21st May 2009 (T254 model) 49 Figure 16(a): Wind and temperature forecasts at 500hPa level by ‘Regional WRF 2.2 Model’ for 00UTC of 21st May 2009 50 Figure 16(b): Forecasts of wind & temperature at 500hPa, 400hPa, 300hPa levels by MM 5 model for 21st may 2009. 51 Figure 16(c): Wind and temperature forecasts at 400hPa, 300hPa, 250hPa of 21st May 2009 by ETA model. 52 Figure 17: Precipitation forecasts by regionoal models for 20th May, 2009 53 Figure 18: (a) Meteograms (NCMRWF T254) and (b) EPS meteogram (ECMWF) of winds, temperatures, cloud and precipitation for 20-21 May 2009. 54 Figure 19: Forecasts from http://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Everest/6day/ mid for Mt. Everest 55 Figure 20(a): Route map of Mt. Dhaulagiri and view of the Peak 56 Figure 20(b): Cloud and cloud top temperatures by satellite (Kalpana-1) during Mt. Dhaulagiri summit period 7-8 May 2009 57 Figure 21: Six hourly forecast of precipitation over ‘Peak of marble wall’ Kazakhstan area during 2-4 September 2009 59 12. Annexure-II (E-Mails) 61 Customized Weather Forecast For Mountaineering Expeditions In India Jagvir Singh, Akhilesh Gupta*, G.R. Iyengar, Ashok Kumar Ranjeet Singh, E.N. Rajagopal, L.Harenduprakash and L.S. Rathore National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Ministry of Earth Sciences, A-50 Institutional Area, Sector-62, Noida-201 309 * Department of Science and Technology, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi-110 016 Abstract Mountaineering expeditions are the important peace time activities of Indian defence and paramilitary forces. Weather plays a crucial role in the successful and safe completion of adventure expeditions in the tough, uninhabited and almost inaccessible places like high mountains. There has been a good improvement in the accuracy of the weather forecasts during past two decades or so mainly due to the voluminous increase in observations both from conventional and non-conventional platforms such as satellites, radars, etc. NCMRWF has been catering to demands from various sectors like agriculture, power, transport, tourism industry, defence, etc. since its inception. During the past decade, the Centre has been regularly providing its customized products to mountaineering expeditions through its web site and also through personal interactions with the participating teams. There has been a very high success rate of these expeditions which is to a great extent attributed to high accuracy of products supplied by NCMRWF. This technical report is about such thirty eight safe and successful mountaineering expeditions during 2001 to 2009. The fact that there has been a gradual increase in the demand of such products over the time, suggests popularity and usefulness of these products. Key words: NWP - Numerical weather prediction models; AAW - Army Adventure Wing; Forecast - NWP based customized weather forecasts for mountaineering; NCMRWF - National Centre For Medium Range Weather Forecasting; IMD - India Meteorological Department; BSF - Border Security Force; ITBP - Indo-Tibet Border Police. 1. Introduction: The Government of India established the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) with a primary responsibility of generating and providing medium range weather forecast (3-10 days in advance) for catering to farming sector. The then Prime Minister of India late Shri Rajiv Gandhi inaugurated NCMRWF under the Ministry of Science and Technology and dedicated the first super computer Cray-XMP/14 to the nation in April 1988, for this purpose. NCMRWF began providing its first operational medium range weather forecast products to India Meteorological Department (IMD), the national weather service agency from 1st June 1994. In addition to the research and development work carried out by the Centre (NCMRWF) with the aim of improving the weather forecasting in the country, the Centre had the main responsibility of rendering medium range weather forecast based Agro-Advisory Service (AAS) from Agro-meteorological Field Units located at 127 agro-climatic zones in the country. The AAS service was established and nurtured by the NCMRWF for over 15 years before it was transferred to IMD in 2007. With the development of NWP at NCMRWF, demand for customized weather products had gradually increased from different agencies like the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Water Resources, Power Sector, Armed Forces, etc. NCMRWF developed NWP products based customized weather forecasts to cater to such requirements. This activity of meeting the specific demands for weather forecasting products began in 1998 and continued till date. There has been a gradual improvement in the accuracy and range of such forecasts as well as their real time dissemination. The centre has been providing weather forecast support to the following agencies: a. Crop Weather Watch Group (CWWG) meetings of the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture since 1998 until 2008. b. Indian Army for strategic and adventure purposes begining from 1999 during Kargil’s conflict and subsequently for a number of mountaineering, hot air ballooning and paragliding expeditions. c. Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for mountaineering expeditions organised by BSF, ITBP, IB. d. Nehru Institute of Mountaineering Uttarkashi (NIM), S.G. Mountaineering Institute Gangtok(SGMI), Himalayan Mountaineering Institute Darjeeling (HMI) for their mountaineering expeditions. e. The Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. (PGCIL) from time to time for power distribution and management. f. Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. for their off shore single point moored project work (2008) g. A large number of media groups both print and electronic media This report however is confined to the supply of NWP products based customized weather forecast support for the mountaineering expeditions. 2 2. Brief Account of the Expeditions The following paragraphs give a brief account of customized forecast products generated and supplied by NCMRWF to defence and paramilitary forces for mountaineering expeditions. A brief introduction of background of customized forecasting at NCMRWF is also given here. 2.1 Beginning of Customized Forecasting at NCMRWF NCMRWF received its first request of customised weather forecast from the Indian Army in the context of a strategic application during the Kargil conflict with Pakistan in 1999. It was the first occasion when NCMRWF prepared customized forecasts based on its NWP model for the region and provided the same to the office of Director General of Military Operation (DGMO). Forecasts of snowfall and rainfall over Western Himalayan region and the Kargil area (Figure 1) were issued 4-5 days in advance using the T80 global model products. These products were found to be accurate and useful on several occasions in the day to day military operations conducted by the Indian Army and Indian Air Force. This provided encorregement and inspiration for customization of NWP products and had greatly helped NCMRWF to take up new areas of application of NWP products.
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